"... the way we negotiate peace is that we negotiate with those who were fighters or at the warring parties. And typically, women are not fighters and not warring parties. So women always have to beg and negotiate and try to engage in all of those processes.

"[I]t's heartbreaking and enraging that some of the predictions that UNFPA made when we saw that the pandemic was going to involve lockdowns and movement restrictions, have actually come to pass [...] I still am very worried about the situation of women who can be trapped with an abuser. And now you have a lockdown in your country, and you don't know where to turn and nobody's there when you call the hotline..."

In this episode of Awake At Night, Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of UNFPA, speaks about how she is working to deliver a world where every young person's potential is fulfilled.

Hunger is often associated with developing countries, but food insecurity is also present in higher income countries, including the richest country in the world, the United States.

"One of the things I hold on to is most people on the planet have escaped from those problems, as the generations have passed. And when you're confronting the next bleak, horrible event, holding on to the fact that it's possible to escape…is invaluable.”

In the midst of COVID-19, we have an historic opportunity to look at the world as it is, based on the facts, and then focus on collective solutions, according to a special proje

In the latest episode of Awake At Night, Winnie Byanyima, recently appointed Director-General of UNAIDS (the UN organization leading the global effort to end HIV AIDS as a public health threat by 2030) talks about what it's been like having to deal with the complexities of two pandemics at once; COVID-19 and HIV AIDS.

All parties to the conflict in Yemen - and the humanitarian catastrophe that it has created – are responsible for terrible crimes which should be investigated by an international criminal probe. 

As we mark five years after Europe’s refugee crisis, we revisit Awake at Night's episode with Boris Cheshirkov, who worked for UNHCR as a spokesperson in his native Bulgaria when thousands of refugees were arriving at the border. 

Although Afghanistan’s COVID-19 crisis is “vast”, what people really want are jobs and security, according to a senior UN relief official. 

In the latest episode of Awake At Night, Marie-Roseline Bélizaire is a doctor and epidemiologist with the World Health Organization (WHO), recounts her experiences on the frontlines of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, contact tracing that pandemic. Now, fighting COVID, she’s able to apply that expertise to the Central African Republic.

Zainab Bangura is the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi and worries for the health and safety of her staff and the populations they serve in the face COVID-19. As UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict from 2012-17, Zainab talks of the secondary trauma she felt after taking in the pain of countless accounts of rape inflicted on women and girls as a weapon of war in this 5th episode of Awake at Night.

In the latest episode of Awake at Night, Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Programme for WHO, speaks about giving up on dreams of becoming a trauma surgeon after breaking his spine in a car crash in Iraq. He was held hostage there while working in a hospital during the first Gulf War. That experience set him on the path to WHO, with a specialism in infectious diseases.

Matshidiso Moeti is the first female Regional Director for Africa for the World Health Organisation. Now she’s the face of the COVID-19 fight in Africa, but she says facing the pandemic is easier than where she started her career as a doctor - fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s. In this third episode of season 3 of Awake at Night with host Melissa Fleming, she says, we’re willing to talk about inequalities and tackle stigma about disease.

As the coronavirus continues to spread worldwide, in developing countries it’s rural girls who are proving to be the most vulnerable to abuse during economic collapse and lockdown.

In this episode, Awake at Night host Melissa Fleming speaks with Neil Walsh, Chief of Cybercrime and Anti-Money Laundering fo